Artwork
Historical past
#Africa
#set up
#sculpture
#Tavares Strachan
Set up view of ‘Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere.’ “Ruin of a Giant (King Tubby)” (2024). Photographs by Mark Blower. All pictures © Tavares Strachan, courtesy of the artist and the Hayward Gallery, shared with permission
From the 14-meter-long “Black Star,” a ship docked in an elevated pool, to a collection of immersive, luminescent installations, Tavares Strachan highlights hidden histories on the Hayward Gallery at London’s Southbank Centre. The artist’s large-scale survey, There Is Gentle Someplace, explores his persevering with curiosity in historical past and its intersections with science, exploration, and tradition.
Strachan (beforehand) usually faucets into the legacy of the portrait bust, drawing on sources starting from historical Egypt and Rome to early-modern examples which have usually celebrated rich, white European males. The artist turns this practice on its head by highlighting Black figures who’ve been traditionally ignored or deliberately ignored, delving into what it means to be acknowledged or belong on the planet. The theme of sunshine usually seems in his work by means of using neon or the distinction of brightness and shadow.
Scale and house additionally play an integral function in Strachan’s installations, which invite the viewer to wander in and round a variety of monuments, buildings, and pathways. In “Intergalactic Palace,” for instance, the inside of a straw hut transforms right into a resplendent, shrine-like dome of sunshine centered round an elaborate DJ sales space, and “Jah Rastafari with Rice Field (Stacked with Pineapple, Shield and Football)” recreates an agricultural setting that accentuates two totem-like figures.
Lots of the visages included into the artist’s work painting actual folks or deities, like sound pioneer King Tubby, who influenced the event of dub, an digital music type that emerged from reggae within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies. And in “Game and Board (Marsha P. Johnson), the prominent gay rights activist dons a floral crown and a collar of grapes. Strachan emphasizes a connection to ancestry and the sacred, which Hayward director Ralph Rugoff describes as a “way of remapping” neighborhood and world connections of the African diaspora.
There Is Gentle Someplace continues by means of September 1. Discover extra on the gallery’s web site, and comply with the artist’s updates on Instagram.
“Game and Board (Marsha P. Johnson)” (2023)
Left: “Intergalactic Palace” (2024). Proper: “Ruin of a Giant (King Tubby)” (2024)
Inside element of “Intergalactic Palace”
Set up view of ‘Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere.’ “Jah Rastafari with Rice Field (Stacked with Pineapple, Shield and Football)” (2023)
Set up view of ‘Tavares Strachan: There Is Gentle Someplace. “Black Star” (2024)
Foreground: “A Map of the Crown (Unknown African ca.1960)” (2023). Background: “Mind Field No. 5” (2023)
Set up view of ‘Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere,’ together with ‘Map of the Crown’ collection (2022-24) and ‘Mind Fields’ collection (2023-24)
“Inner Elder (Biko as Septimius Severus” (2023)
“Head and Pot (Mary Seacole: The Ram)” (2023)
#Africa
#set up
#sculpture
#Tavares Strachan
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